Remove from 'Safely Remove' [Win7]?

Hi folks,

I haven't been able to find an answer to this via Google so I though I'd ask
the gurus here.

With my Win7 desktop machine I have (mainly used for gaming) I have three
front-loading removable HDD bays. I like this system as it compliments the
USB / SATA dock I use with my latop. I can use bare drives rather than
enclosed externals and when I need to move data from drive-to-drive to
consolidate backup categories I can do it in the desktop at full SATA speed.

My issue is that, while I need to have HDDs showing up in the 'Safely Remove
Hardware' list I'd like to remove my boot drive and dedicated Readyboost
flash-drive from the list. It's not that W7 will let me stop the boot
drive - it won't - however it will let me stop the Readyboost drive. That's
a PITA as, once clicked there's no un-clicking it and it then takes a while
to copy the correct files to it to optimise boot time and programme
start-ups.

So removing both would not only save accidental removal of the flash-drive
but also reduce list-clutter. However I'm yet to find a workable way to do
it. LOL, 7's certainly not like XP for me - I've learned quite an impressive
amount of UI customisations for XP.

Any help with this would be awesome. I've given up on Googling it. :-/

Cheers,
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).

 

Hi
Installed GodMode yet?

You should be able to remove via Disk Management from being displayed?
Select the device, right-click and remove, I've done that with recovery
partitions that show up, but not sure of the impact for your two
devices....

 

I would simply ditch the Readyboost flash drive. You don't mention PC
specs, but do some testing, it may not be providing you much benefit.
If necessary, can you not add some RAM pretty cheaply?

re 'Safely Remove h/w' list - I'm guessing a registry setting? I would
post that specific question to the MS user Win7 forum community and I
reckon you've got a good chance of getting a resolution there.

I found a few bits, sorry, didn't read far - your job! here...
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/search/search?
SearchTerm=safely+remove++hardware&CurrentScope.ForumName=Windows&Curren
tScope.Filter=windows_7&ContentTypeScope=&x=0&y=0

Including...
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-
hardware/sata-3-6gb-showing-up-in-safely-remove-hardware/60bf17ac-e7da-
47fe-81f4-31ec24ae2c4e

But if you don't find much yourself in the forum, then post your
question either in the Win7, Hardware forum, or just the Win7 forum
itself.

PS: would like to hear back if you find a resolution!

 

No. I *do* recall hearing about it before I had a W7 machine. Should I
Google?

Hmmm, food for thought. Thanks Malcolm.
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).

 

I've tested and a 4GB fast flash drive readyboost makes a large measurable
difference to boot times, game startup times and game map load times. (I use
a flash drive with an 'access' LED so can also visually check when it's
being accessed.

Machine is an oldie but goodie; It's a self-built 2007 Socket 775 machine. I
knew at the time of building that it was likely (barring miracles or extreme
good fortune) the last machine I'd be able to make for myself so I built it
to last. An ASUS mobo with all Japanese solid polymer caps fitted with what
is pretty much the ultimate Socket 775 CPU - A CoreQuad Extreme QX9650; 45nm
fab. 3GHz stock, unlocked mulitplier - O/Cs to 3.8 with ease with 12M L2
cache, 1333 FSB stock (I run it at 1600 FSB to be synchronous with the
DDR2/800 RAM.)

Mobo max RAM is 8GB - which I was running for a while. However, when I threw
together a second back-up desktop I swapped it's 2x1GB sticks for 2x2GB
sticks from my machine and, running with 6GB seems no different to the
performance with 8GB. I'll buy a couple more 2GB DDR2/800 sticks when I can
get the money together to take it back to 8GB - I've been trying to sell a
few things on TM with this in mind but it seems the idiots who bid
outrageously against me when I want something aren't finding my auctions.
:-/

Mechanical HDD as SSDs are still out of my (bread-and-cheese) budget.
However the HDD is a 2013 model Seagate 1TB single-platter 7,200 rpm low
profile drive (ST1000DM003) that a friend visiting from NYC bought for me as
a gift.

So story short: Quad core 3GHz CPU, 6GB RAM (dual channel mode), and fast
mech HDD.

Most of the relevant Google hits I got were indeed from that forum (but
mainly related to people's HDDs showing in the list) and it seems that any
changes made are re-set at next boot.

Sure. I was hoping someone would know off the top of their head - not
expecting someone else to Google for me (even though my Google-Fu seems to

Yeah, those are the sorts of answers that I spent a couple of hours wading
through last year - then again a couple of days ago. Most pertain to HDDs
showing in the list and how to stop that. The thing is I *want* (non-boot)
HDDs to show in the list as I have three hot-swap bays (in this machine,
another in the backup desktop) that I use for hot-swapping.

A big annoyance is that, the the Safely Remove list the *type* of media is
in bold font at the top of the entry but the specifics are in a harder to
read grey font below. Mistakes mainly happen when I'm stopping another flash
drive and am not completely focused due to being sore or hurried. As I
mentioned, once the Readyboost drive is stopped it's blanked and the
algorithms that calculate what files to store on the drive take quite a long
time to optimise the cache again. Frankly it's a PITA.

Yeah. Honestly I'm sick to the back teeth of having to sign up to
[whatever], come up with a password, (usually) dechiper an increasingly
cryptic CAPTCHA, visit a conformation link... blah blah blah. I have 6 pages
in a Word document that is solely usernames, passwords, email address used
and URLs for all of the forums etc. I've needed to join in the last few
years.

Also the only thing I found that was remotely similar to what I was looking
for involved much registry manipulation - multiple entries that needed to be
changed and then writing a batch file created (unique to the machine so I
couldn't just download one) that would run at startup that would undo
Windows 'repairing' the changes at each re-boot!

Honestly I don't think doing something like I'm wanting to do should be this
fusking hard!

Heh! So there's an interest in a solution then. That being the case you'd
think that there *would* be an answer out there somewhere.

Cheers,
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).

 

Hi
Create a folder on your desktop...and rename it to this;

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

 

You may not be using anywhere near 6GB RAM. Have you checked the stats
that the OS puts out? Sorry, I don't run any Windows so I wouldn't know
how. I'd try to find out before parting the shekels for more RAM.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

Thanks for that. I haven't tried it yet as, although my gaming machine runs
64-bit 7 my day-to-day laptop is still running XP and that's what I'm most
familiar with. So basically I'm a 7 n00b and would hate to mess it up.

I've saved that string in a text file and I'll put it on a flash drive and
Tx it to my desktop later. I'd hate to change something crucial and not be
able to change it back...

Cheers,
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).

 

Hi Cliff. I often have two games running and switch from one to the other as
they're both MMORPGs and I have a social circle with each so like to swap
between them to see who's playing what.

So W7 tells me that, during my usual 'mode', of the 6GB available 3.8 is in
use with another 1.5 'reserved' which only leaves a little less than 1GB
marked as free. While I don't run into any issues with RAM now both games I
play are constantly getting updates and expansions and - more to the point -
DDR2 RAM keeps going up in price.

Consequently I'd like to max the machine out to 8GB when I next get a few $
that's not immediately and urgently accounted for. As I said I built this
machine to last me as long as possible[*] and hope like crazy that it does!

[*] Including doing the little things like masking off currently un-used
expansion slots (from new) - something that occured to me quite a while ago
after having one too many problems with inserting new cards in slots that
had been gathering dust for years. I'd often thought that there'd be a
market for clip-on or even push-in slot 'covers' (or that they'd be included
with enthusiast-level mobos) but that's a potential product who's time has
pretty much come and gone now. (A well built PC has good through-case
airflow and, while you can filter out some of the crap, if the filters are
too fine - in a house inhabited by only an invalid who has trouble with
lower back and vaccum cleaning - they get clogged and things get hot.)

Oh, I think that I forgot to mention that stopping the (8GB exFAT formatted)
Readyboost flash drive accidently is more of a problem in my case than you'd
think. I have it in an internal port on a PCIe USB3 expansion card (with a
case window so I can see out the corner of my eye the little LED blinking
when it's accessed). So, if I inadvertantly 'stop' it I have to take the
side off the case and unplug and re-plug it. :-/

Cheers,
--
</Shaun>

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1).

 

Naa, you'll be fine. 'GodMode' doesn't "do" anything, it just puts all
those adminy functions in one place. Unless you use it a lot, you (well
*I*) forget to use it and do things the long way anyway.